Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor believes that the Biden administration is dropping the ball on the current Russo-Ukrainian crisis. And no, he is not arguing for Biden to become more aggressive with Russia. In a recent piece for the American Conservative titled “Biden’s Folly In Ukraine”, Macgregor made the case that the Biden administration is unnecessarily escalating tensions with Russia.
The frequent Fox News guest argues that the Biden administration’s “Threatening Russia, a nuclear armed power, with regime change and then annunciating a nuclear weapons policy that allows for the United States’ first-strike use of nuclear weapons under “extreme circumstances”—responding to an invasion by conventional forces, or chemical or biological attacks—suggests President Biden and his administration really are out of touch with reality.”
The retired Army colonel views domestic problems such as inflation as a far more pressing concern than getting into a hot conflict with Russia. Macgregor observed that “Last week, inflation hit its highest point in nearly 40 years and gas prices have skyrocketed since the conflict in Ukraine began.”
Macgregor correctly identified the “true origins” of this great power tragedy as “NATO’s eastward expansion to include Ukraine.”
Unlike the US’s misadventures in the Middle East, which had little strategic value, Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is existential in nature. Plus, it has massive escalatory dominance, which Macgregor noted:
Ukraine’s proximity to Russia gives Moscow unconstrained and immediate access to Russia’s reserves of military manpower, equipment, and firepower. Notwithstanding Moscow’s determination to avoid unnecessary collateral damage to Ukraine’s population and infrastructure, Russian Air and Ground Forces are at liberty to methodically destroy Ukrainian resistance in detail.
Because Russia has a strong commodity-driven economy that relies on the export of energy, food, mineral, and other energy resources, it enjoys massive strategic depth on the Eurasian landmass. These features of the Russian political economy allow it, as Macgregor put it, to be “Beijing’s natural strategic partner.” Macgregor added that “Moscow’s role in stabilizing Central Asia also makes Russian strength indispensable for the success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative rooted as it is in the historical Silk Road, linking the economies of East Asia to Europe, Africa, and the Near East.”
Interventionists in DC are short-term thinkers who don’t look at the long-term consequences of their policies. As a result, they’re caught off-guard when they start seeing Russia and China forming a strategic partnership that’s weaning itself off the dollar. In addition, more Eurasian countries will join these two behemoths in creating a geoconomic structure that will effectively push out Western powers and put Eurasian actors like Russia and China in the enviable position of being the principal arbiters of nearly all political and economic affairs taking place on the Eurasian landmass.
Macgregor is one of the most credible voices of restraint in American foreign policy circles. Unlike the hawks who want confrontations with countries like China, Iran, and Russia, Macgregor understands the limits of American power. Instead, he focuses on a common sense grand strategy that’s centered on real national defense — securing the US border, focusing on Western Hemispheric affairs, and modernizing the American military.
If America were serious about promoting stability at home and abroad, it would have people like Macgregor staffing key foreign policy positions. Sadly, Macgregor has largely been ignored and the country has paid a huge price in terms of economic and geopolitical stability as a result of not hiring people like him to occupy its key diplomatic or defense posts.
